Scarlet News:

“CMC’s claimed increase in migrant sex workers wrong” Scarlet Alliance responds to CMC Report Jun 2011

Jul 6, 2011 | Media release, News

Respect Inc. have funded peer educators from Culturally and Linguistically Diverse backgrounds, delivering services in Mandarin, Cantonese and Vietnamese. Scarlet Alliance supports the recommendations to improve funding for these services and projects, and supports the Crime and Misconduct Commissions’ efforts to bring these issues and the needs of non-English speaking background migrant sex workers to the attention of policy makers in Queensland, but dispute their claim that there is an increase in the number of migrant sex workers.

Contrary to conclusions drawn by the Crime and Misconduct Commission in their 2011 Report "Regulating Prostitution," there has been no evidence of an increase in the number of migrant sex workers in Queensland between 1999 and 2010. None of the submissions to the review of the legislation found evidence of an increase in the number of migrant sex workers in Queensland, and none of the peer education, support or outreach by Scarlet Alliance or our members in the last ten years point to an increase either.

The submissions from the Prostitution Licensing Authority, Queensland Police Service, Scarlet Alliance and Respect Inc do show evidence of a reorganisation of migrant sex workers over the period of time of the review. This includes and increase and improvement in the outreach services offered to non-English speaking background sex workers, and increase in police attention to Culturally and Linguistically Diverse sex workers of Asian background, and the introduction of brothel workplaces that caters specifically to Asian background migrant and local sex workers. This evidence has been misread by the CMC as an increase in the number of migrant background sex workers in Queensland.

Migrant sex workers, and local sex workers of Asian background, are able to work in the sex industry in Queensland, as is any person of any ethnic background.

Inaccurate portrayals of the size and scale of migrant sex work in Queensland or the numbers of sex workers of particular ethnic backgrounds, including the use of words such as "influx" are misleading and dangerous conclusions drawn by the CMC and misrepresentative of sex work in Queensland.